The indictment published by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and signed by Preet Bharara, famous for prosecuting Charlie Shrem and Ross Ulbricht, charges three defendants with twenty-three different crimes including the famous hacking of JPMorgan Chase in 2014. The latter involved stealing personal data of 83 million customers of the largest US bank.

Gery Shalon and Ziv Orenstein, Israeli citizens, were arrested in Israel in July 2015, simultaneously with Yuri Lebedev and Anthony R. Murgio, apprehended in Florida – a story which has been covered by CoinFox in detail. Joshua Samuel Aaron, their alleged accomplice, a US citizen, remains fugitive. They are charged with laundering hundreds of millions of dollars with the help of a powerful cybercrime network, which organised hacks and cyberattacks, operated illegal online pharmacies and casinos and sold fake and malicious anti-virus software.

“Through their criminal schemes, between in or about 2007 and in or about July 2015, Gery Shalon and his co-conspirators earned hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds, of which Shalon concealed at least $100 million in Swiss and other bank accounts,” according to the document.

“Gery Shalon, Joshua Aaron, and Ziv Orenstein, the defendants, and their co-conspirators operated their criminal schemes, and laundered their vast criminal proceeds, through at least 75 shell companies and bank and brokerage accounts around the world. The defendants controlled these companies and accounts using aliases, and by fraudulently using approximately 200 purported identification documents, including over 30 false passports that purported to be issued by the United States and at least 16 other countries.”

Coin.mx, an unlicensed bitcoin exchange owned by Shalon and allegedly used to launder bitcoins paid as ransom to the Cryptowall hackers, seems to be a link in the criminal chain.

Mircea Mihaescu, managing partner of SBT Ventures, will have negotiations with three cryptocurrency companies in the nearest future. According to the experienced top-manager, those who say reject bitcoin now will have a difficult time in the future.